SC Stays High Court Order On Navneet Kaur Rana's Caste Certificate

Navneet Kaur Rana caste certificate: On Tuesday, June 22, the Supreme Court stayed a Bombay High Court judgment that cancelled the "wrong caste certificate" Amravati MP Navneet Kaur-Rana obtained.

She was an independent candidate who won from a constituency reserved for members of the Scheduled Caste community. So, the Bombay High Court order meant that she was in danger of losing her seat. Her certificate stated that she came from the 'Mochi' community.

Navneet Kaur Rana caste certificate controversy:

Reportedly, a vacation bench (a special bench constituted by the Chief Justice of India) comprising of Vineet Saran and Dinesh Maheshwari stayed the operation of the High Court judgment on Tuesday. It also issued a notice on the special leave petition the Amravati MP filed against the High Court judgment.

Mukul Rohatgi, Senior Advocate appeared for Kaur-Rana and stated that the terms "mochi" and "chamaar" are synonymous. He said that the scrutiny committee had determined her caste status based on original records though the High Court did not contest the authenticity of the documents. This led to a reverse in the decision of the scrutiny committee through a writ petition. Rohatgi also said that the High Court's judgement was "erroneous" as it had ignored several important documents.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for the petitioners who had approached the High Court against the MP’s caste certificate. He said that the vigilance committee had found several documents to be fabricated. The apex court asked Sibal to file a counter-affidavit regarding the matter and stayed the judgement of the Bombay High Court.

The Bombay High Court had earlier asked Kaur-Rana to surrender the certificate to the Committee within six weeks and also directed her to pay a cost of two lakh rupees to the Maharashtra Legal Services Authority within two weeks.

Further, the High Court had declared Kaur-Rana's certificate to be "wrong" and said that such a certificate may deprive genuine and deserving persons of their due benefits. It noted that the MP's claim of belonging to the "mochi" caste was fraudulent and that the two sets of documents she produced before the Scrutiny Committee were contradictory to one another.

Navneet Kaur Rana Caste Certificate, HC Judgement:

"Since the respondent has obtained the caste certificate fraudulently and got the said caste certificate validated fraudulently from Caste Scrutiny Committee by producing fabricated and fraudulent documents, such caste certificate is cancelled and stands confiscated," the HC had stated. "It is needless to observe that all the consequences in law provided upon cancellation of such a fraudulently obtained certificate shall follow," it had added.

Navneet Kaur Rana had won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections after the Congress-NCP combine decided to extend support to her. She thus successfully defeated the then sitting MP, Anandrao Adsul of the Shiv Sena party.